Six months later, kindness remembered

Six months after the fact, the Demon basketball team's kindness resurfaced Saturday in Fayetteville, Ark.

While there attending my niece's graduation in a class of 686 from Rogers High School, I was able to reunite with our former neighbors growing up in Jonesboro. The Turners live in and around Fayetteville now, but lost mother Sandra last fall. Her daughters and and former husband were gathered Saturday afternoon for a cookout and our family dropped by for a visit.

Incredible coincidence - the graduation was Friday night in 20,000-seat Bud Walton Arena, which was nearly half full. Our group sat in section 132 on the top row. Right in front of us was extended family of the Turners, and both daughters sat across the aisle from us. It wasn't assigned seating and there wasn't any planning - it just worked out that way, leading to our more relaxed reunion Saturday and this poignant tale.

I saw the Turners at the Demons' Dec. 19 game at Bud Walton Arena against Arkansas. Didn't know at the time that I missed daughter Mary the previous night at the sparkling Promenade Mall in Rogers, where the Demon coaches and team went to catch a movie and a bite to eat.

Mary didn't miss the Demons. She noticed our players walking in the mall, and saw the NSU logo with the state of Louisiana. Her mother had passed away in October. Her mother was a Northwestern nursing school graduate.

Mary, never a wallflower, walked up and started visiting with the players. She told them that seeing them reminded her of her mom, and by the end of the conversation, a souvenir ball had been purchased from a nearby sporting goods store, and the players had autographed it for Mary and her family.

So a little bit of Northwestern went a long way on a cool December night in northwest Arkansas ... and nobody thought to mention it to Coach Mike McConathy until I was able to call him Saturday evening from Fayetteville.

Doug Ireland, SID